Stephanie R. Sorensen
I have set the goal of reading and re-reading the Hugo and Nebula Award winners. All of them. It's going slow, as I'm reading lots of other things as well, but I'm alternating new work with old classics I read as a kid, which makes for really interesting mashups in my head, like last week's pairing of Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle's "Lucifer's Hammer" and N.K.Jemison's "The Fifth Season." Wow, five stars on both.
The conversation in my head about the pair goes something like this: both are post-apocalyptic how-does-society-work stories, with well-drawn worlds and interesting characters and rollicking plots. All the good stuff I love. Great world-building in both. Point to Jemison for character depth and well-roundedness (and very innovative ways to develop and show character--no spoilers but you will love it when you get to the reveals); Niven's characters began a bit more "stock" "off the shelf" "ready-to-wear" offerings--but they developed depth and multi-dimensionality in the crucible of their demolished world as they fought for survival.
Where my brain went "Boom!" was when I began to think about these talented authors' divergent handling of, well, divergent characters, marginalized characters. I don't know if the noise of the battle between writers over cultural appropriation, stereotyping and handling of marginalized characters has reached the ears of readers or not, but it's been kind of a big and noisy deal in the places where writers hang out. I'm especially sensitive to it as I, a proud Viking-American, have written a first novel set entirely in Japan, with 100% Japanese characters, so I have in some minds committed a terrible sin of cultural appropriation and probably messed up some cultural details. It is a charge I reject, on the grounds that it IS THE WRITER'S JOB to explore other cultures and other minds.
But I digress.
Back to "Lucifer's Hammer" and "The Fifth Season."
"Lucifer's Hammer" was published in 1977--forty years ago!--and I read it as a kid when it came out and loved it. On this re-reading, with last year's "The Fifth Season" fresh in my mind, I found its handling of female and black characters jarring. How to explain? As a kid, and a feminist kid, I was so excited to see a female astronaut portrayed. As an adult, it was really interesting to see her male colleagues so freaked out about her femaleness, as the authors carefully noted, in the ribbing they gave her about female plumbing and the special arrangements it requires in null gravity. It was interesting to see the Senator's daughter, in her own telling, reduced to the princess-as-prize to be awarded to the best of the male three heroes riding out on three heroic missions, and yes, she married the sole surviving hero.
As a kid, and a socially aware kid in my multi-racial public high school, I liked seeing a black astronaut, and seeing the authors refer (twice! poor editing, or really wanted to drive it home?!) to the four of them, the token female, the token black and then the expected two white males, as "like unto gods" in their superior intelligence, courage and skills. As an adult, I was struck by the detailed portrayal of the discomfort the white ranchers felt around the black astronaut, the need for forced jokes about "back of the bus" when the black astronaut climbed out of the space capsule last, and the gang of blacks who join up with the cannibals...and by the complete absence of Hispanics in a fairly detailed portrayal of Los Angeles and its social groups...
"The Fifth Season" is far more nuanced in its portrayal of the marginalized. First, it's a fantasy post-apocalyptic world, with super powers and other fantasy elements mixed in with the tech, and its races and tribes are not our world's races and tribes. It avoids the tensions of dealing with our world while reveling in the realities of cross-group tensions. It did a fantastic job of delineating the experience of the super-talented member of the despised race being reluctantly embraced and exploited by the powerful. Character and character's position in the well-drawn social hierarchy drive plot in this marvelous book. I can't say more without spoiling the story, but just want to underline what an insightful and modern take on cross-cultural tensions and relations this book offers. The author's personal background both informs this book and helps it transcend any ghetto of special racial/gender/sexual identity interest.
So, you are probably expecting me to bash Nivens/Pournelle for their forty-year-old sins of tokenism, racism and ignorance and to praise Jemison for her artful portrayal of today's issues in disguised form, as a good modern would. Half true--Jemison achieved literature, high literature, in her book as well as making it a great genre fantasy work.
But I will not bash Nivens/Pournelle for being products of their time. They may have succumbed to all the sins of tokenism and other 'isms" that today's writers are exhorted to avoid when addressing race/gender/sexual identity. Rather I would like to point out, rather forcefully, that Nivens/Pournelle wrote forty years ago, when the Equal Rights Amendment fight was in full fury, and a year before it went down to final defeat, a defeat that still shocks me. They wrote when we were barely a generation beyond legal apartheid in schools, buses, water fountains and bathrooms between black and white citizens, and a year before the Mormon church decided black men could hold the priesthood. So what looks quaint, and tainted by tokenism, was at the time of its writing crazy radical and advanced and controversial. Nivens/Pournelle may have gotten their cultural details wrong, and drawn flat characters and made the black guys cannibals (along with a bigger group of white religious nuts) and made a woman hero into a princess-as-prize. But the woman picked up her weapon and fought the cannibals and shamed the cowardly men into standing their ground. The black astronaut went off to save the day after the white astronaut died trying. And a woman and a black man flew in space a generation before their real life characters made it to the stars. So before we bash writers for stepping outside their cultural backgrounds to write, or bash them for falling into stereotype as they explore the future and the possible-that-doesn't-exist-in-our-world-yet, let us applaud their courage and radical vision.
Brava Jemison and bravo Nivens/Pournelle, for helping us see our world in new ways.
The conversation in my head about the pair goes something like this: both are post-apocalyptic how-does-society-work stories, with well-drawn worlds and interesting characters and rollicking plots. All the good stuff I love. Great world-building in both. Point to Jemison for character depth and well-roundedness (and very innovative ways to develop and show character--no spoilers but you will love it when you get to the reveals); Niven's characters began a bit more "stock" "off the shelf" "ready-to-wear" offerings--but they developed depth and multi-dimensionality in the crucible of their demolished world as they fought for survival.
Where my brain went "Boom!" was when I began to think about these talented authors' divergent handling of, well, divergent characters, marginalized characters. I don't know if the noise of the battle between writers over cultural appropriation, stereotyping and handling of marginalized characters has reached the ears of readers or not, but it's been kind of a big and noisy deal in the places where writers hang out. I'm especially sensitive to it as I, a proud Viking-American, have written a first novel set entirely in Japan, with 100% Japanese characters, so I have in some minds committed a terrible sin of cultural appropriation and probably messed up some cultural details. It is a charge I reject, on the grounds that it IS THE WRITER'S JOB to explore other cultures and other minds.
But I digress.
Back to "Lucifer's Hammer" and "The Fifth Season."
"Lucifer's Hammer" was published in 1977--forty years ago!--and I read it as a kid when it came out and loved it. On this re-reading, with last year's "The Fifth Season" fresh in my mind, I found its handling of female and black characters jarring. How to explain? As a kid, and a feminist kid, I was so excited to see a female astronaut portrayed. As an adult, it was really interesting to see her male colleagues so freaked out about her femaleness, as the authors carefully noted, in the ribbing they gave her about female plumbing and the special arrangements it requires in null gravity. It was interesting to see the Senator's daughter, in her own telling, reduced to the princess-as-prize to be awarded to the best of the male three heroes riding out on three heroic missions, and yes, she married the sole surviving hero.
As a kid, and a socially aware kid in my multi-racial public high school, I liked seeing a black astronaut, and seeing the authors refer (twice! poor editing, or really wanted to drive it home?!) to the four of them, the token female, the token black and then the expected two white males, as "like unto gods" in their superior intelligence, courage and skills. As an adult, I was struck by the detailed portrayal of the discomfort the white ranchers felt around the black astronaut, the need for forced jokes about "back of the bus" when the black astronaut climbed out of the space capsule last, and the gang of blacks who join up with the cannibals...and by the complete absence of Hispanics in a fairly detailed portrayal of Los Angeles and its social groups...
"The Fifth Season" is far more nuanced in its portrayal of the marginalized. First, it's a fantasy post-apocalyptic world, with super powers and other fantasy elements mixed in with the tech, and its races and tribes are not our world's races and tribes. It avoids the tensions of dealing with our world while reveling in the realities of cross-group tensions. It did a fantastic job of delineating the experience of the super-talented member of the despised race being reluctantly embraced and exploited by the powerful. Character and character's position in the well-drawn social hierarchy drive plot in this marvelous book. I can't say more without spoiling the story, but just want to underline what an insightful and modern take on cross-cultural tensions and relations this book offers. The author's personal background both informs this book and helps it transcend any ghetto of special racial/gender/sexual identity interest.
So, you are probably expecting me to bash Nivens/Pournelle for their forty-year-old sins of tokenism, racism and ignorance and to praise Jemison for her artful portrayal of today's issues in disguised form, as a good modern would. Half true--Jemison achieved literature, high literature, in her book as well as making it a great genre fantasy work.
But I will not bash Nivens/Pournelle for being products of their time. They may have succumbed to all the sins of tokenism and other 'isms" that today's writers are exhorted to avoid when addressing race/gender/sexual identity. Rather I would like to point out, rather forcefully, that Nivens/Pournelle wrote forty years ago, when the Equal Rights Amendment fight was in full fury, and a year before it went down to final defeat, a defeat that still shocks me. They wrote when we were barely a generation beyond legal apartheid in schools, buses, water fountains and bathrooms between black and white citizens, and a year before the Mormon church decided black men could hold the priesthood. So what looks quaint, and tainted by tokenism, was at the time of its writing crazy radical and advanced and controversial. Nivens/Pournelle may have gotten their cultural details wrong, and drawn flat characters and made the black guys cannibals (along with a bigger group of white religious nuts) and made a woman hero into a princess-as-prize. But the woman picked up her weapon and fought the cannibals and shamed the cowardly men into standing their ground. The black astronaut went off to save the day after the white astronaut died trying. And a woman and a black man flew in space a generation before their real life characters made it to the stars. So before we bash writers for stepping outside their cultural backgrounds to write, or bash them for falling into stereotype as they explore the future and the possible-that-doesn't-exist-in-our-world-yet, let us applaud their courage and radical vision.
Brava Jemison and bravo Nivens/Pournelle, for helping us see our world in new ways.
More Answered Questions
Danita L
asked
Stephanie R. Sorensen:
Hi Stephanie - I used to own a bookstore and I do book recommendations for the library here in Bozeman, Montana. I just recommended Toru: Wayfarer Returns for purchase and wanted to double-check on the publication dates. The paperback edition is shown as being published in January, 2016 and the Hardcover in February, 2016. I see the same dates on Amazon so I am assuming those are the correct dates?
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